This blog contains the notes that I write for the films we screen in our village film society together with other posts about films I've seen or film related articles and books that I've read.
It's good to see Howard Shore's soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the list, as it is music that I return to on a regular basis.
However I was disppopinted not see see some of my other favourites on the list, particularly Michael Nyman for his early work with Peter Greenaway and Philip Glass for films such as The Hours and Notes on a Scandal.
This week we are screening a real historical epic: Lincoln.
Here are my notes:
Lincoln
USA 2012150
minutes
Director: Steven
Spielberg
Starring:Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy
Lee Jones, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levett and James Spader
Awards and Nominations
Won
two Oscars (including Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis) plus 10 nominations
(including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best
Supporting Actress (Sally Field), Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones)
and Best Music (John Williams)
Won
one BAFTA (Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis) plus nine nominations (including
Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay)
A
further 57 wins and 95 nominations
“Steven Spielberg has made
more obviously entertaining and more emotionally seductive movies than Lincoln,
but this is for him the most brave and, for the audience, most demanding
picture in the 40 years since his emergence as a major director.It's a film about statesmanship, politics,
the creation of the world's greatest democracy, and it's concerned with what we
can learn from the study and contemplation of history.Spielberg and his eloquent screenwriter, the
playwright Tony Kushner, handle these themes with flair, imagination and
vitality, and Daniel Day-Lewis embodies
them with an indelible intelligence as the 16th president of the United States.”
Philip
French
In January 1865
Abraham Lincoln is fighting to get the Thirteenth Amendment, which will abolish
slavery once and for all, through Congress.It is the final months of the Civil War and the passage of the Amendment
will free all slaves, not just those freed under his 1863 Emancipation
Proclamation.
The film is based on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of
Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Spielberg had been considering
a film about Lincoln since 1999 when Goodwin first told him what she was about
to write.Spielberg commissioned an
initial script from John Logan with Liam Neeson (who had worked with Spielberg
on Schindler’s List) to be cast in
the title role.However the project was
delayed and when work began again in 2010 it was announced that Daniel Day
Lewis had replaced Neeson and that Tony Kushner had taken over as screenwriter.
Tony Kushner considered
Lincoln "the greatest democratic leader in the world" and found the
writing assignment daunting because "I have no idea [what made him great];
I don't understand what he did any more than I understand how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet
or Mozart wrote Così fan tutte”.Kushner struggled with his material and after
producing an initial 500 page draft which covered four months of Lincoln’s life
he finally decided to concentrate on just the two months during which Lincoln
was focussed on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
In a typically
perceptive essay on History and Cinema Simon Schama speculates about films with
historical subjects:
“If
movie history is to get produced as box office with a conscience, it must serve
one of two purposes: explain the Origins of Us or act as Augury of What Is to
Come.But this kind of history, whether
designed as the genealogy of identity politics or a prudential
political-investment service, seldom escapes the contemporary world that it
claims to transcend.”
The chronology of the
release of Lincoln clarifies its
purpose.It received its world premiere
at the New York Film Festival on 8th October 2012: a story of a
lawyer who had adopted Illinois as his home state and who was elected president
despite his lack of experience at a national level.On 6th November 2012 Americans
re-elected Barack Obama as President: another lawyer who had chosen Illinois as his
home state, who had been criticised when he first campaigned for his lack of experience
at a national level, and who had consciously launched his first presidential campaign
at the Old Illinois State Capitol in Springfield where Lincoln had made one of
his famous speeches.
It's the opening night of our new season tonight. Traditionally we have chosen something popular to pull in the punters and persaude them to sign up to the rest of the season and tonight we are screening Song for Marion.
I know the film received good reviews, but it did not appear too high on my "to see" list - unlike Cloud Atlas which I cannot wait to see - but I'm prepared to be open-minded.
Here are my notes:
Song
for Marion
UK 201293
minutes
Director: Paul
Andrew Williams
Starring:Vanessa Redgrave,
Terence Stamp, Anne Reid, Christopher Ecclestone, Gemma Arterton
Awards and Nominations
Three
nominations at the British Independent Film Awards for Screenplay (Paul
Andrew Williams), Best Actor (Stamp) and Best Supporting Actress
(Redgrave)
Winner
of Audience Choice Award at the Nashville Film Festival
“This is a
sweet-natured, charming, if modestly conceived picture, which is much better
than Dustin Hoffman's recent oldie-song dramaQuartet
– more relaxed, more persuasive, and it actually delivers the all-important
musical climax that Hoffman somehow managed to omit.”
Peter
Bradshaw
Marion (Vanessa
Redgrave) and Arthur (Terence Stamp) are a long-married lower-middle-class
couple.Although she is terminally ill
she is an outgoing member of a local choir (“the OAPz”) run by a young music
teacher (Gemma Arterton ), while he refuses to join the choir and is alienated
from their son (Christopher Ecclestone).
Both Redgrave and
Stamp started their film careers in the early 1960s and starred in some of the
most iconic films of the era including A
Man for All Seasons (1966) Blow-Up
(1966) and Camelot (1967) for
Redgrave and Billy Budd (1962), The Collector (1965) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) for
Stamp although since then it has been Redgrave who has had by far the more
illustrious career both in terms of the films she has made and the quantity of
nominations and awards she has received.
Paul Andrew Williams
made his name with London to Brighton
(2006) a brutal thriller that Peter Bradshaw regarded as one of the best
British films of the last decade and for which he received a BAFTA nomination
for the Most Promising Newcomer in 2007.He followed this by The Cottage
(2008) and Cherry Tree Lane (2010),
both of which were also thrillers.Thus Song for Marion reflects quite a change
to his work to date, and is the result of a new joint development programme
funded by Pathe and BBC Films.
Once upon a time a poster could change the meaning of a quotation by the simple expedient of missing out the word "not" (as in "...not as good as his best films..). Now the challenge is to identify the author/website/blogpost that offers the glowing review.
